--explicit language--

#1 Wednesday, 11.19 AM

I don't know what to write Annie. I find myself writing for the second time now, as my first letter was discarded by the system. It was raining that time, just like it is now, and that letter was mostly about how good it is to write to you when it's raining. 

There’s just something about the raindrops that fall from the sky. It’s as though each raindrop touching me would symbolize some kind of spiritual cleansing. It washes over my face and with that it washes my guilt away.

It's been raining continuously for almost a month now and I’ve been consistently failing to send you what I’ve been writing during this time.

My letter is related to the rain in many ways, but I'm unsure if any of it matters at all. I want to write that you’ve hurt me, and that this is one of the reasons I've been in such a prolonged silence. But I cannot just write it down simply like this and also there's no point in it, I guess. Whatever. 

I saw you last Saturday from the taxi seat. I saw you riding your bike between cars, hurrying somewhere and I know you didn't see me, but I saw you and your long hair battling against the headwind, and it was so weird how my stomach clenched instantly. 

It was so bizarre to feel my dick dug at the fly of my jeans in a second. And the fright, the tightness in my chest were overwhelming. What if you'd notice me while waiting at the traffic light? I was never going to live that down. God, you were just an arm’s length away.

I don’t think I’ve ever told you that I find your thoughts pretty. I'd like to watch them as if they were a movie. I guess this is something that many people don't experience – when there's a relationship between a man and a woman in which you not only see the other person's body but also glimpse their bodies’ thoughts. This doesn't necessarily mean that you understand or know them, but you can simply see them, you know? Even during intimate moments, you can witness these thoughts as they surface. 

It is something incredibly beautiful. You can snoop them behind the ear, along the neck, and at where the curve of the buttocks starts. Around the ankles, at the veins. And according to those who are seemingly competent in the topic, you can also find them at the male genitals, although I don't know this, I don't think of anything then. 

I'm sick now by the way - it's been a week now in terms of my nose and about a year in terms of my body and soul, since we split up. 

Anyways, all I wanted to say is that I miss you.

#2 Thursday, 10.47 PM

If you learn something for ten years, it takes twenty years to forget it. The more schooling you have attended, the farther you are from wisdom. 

Maybe that's the reason I'm writing to you again in such a brief period, but I really want you to reply, Annie. I used to love getting messages from you. Would be good to test if it is still so. 

Once in one of your (drunk?) messages that I received around 2 a.m. you wrote to me that you're afraid of storms. I'm scared of them too. Although I'm scared more of the inner storms. Because those are kind of the same – thundering and lightning within the soul and God knows what aftermath they might bring. I'm grateful for the storms that rage outside because it feels so good to have them outside and not inside. 

Many times I can't properly express what I want to say and people laugh at it. I hate it when others don't understand that the inexpressible sometimes means much more than a simple lack of vocabulary. 

Would you agree, Annie?

#3 Sunday, 10.12 AM

You don't need to write to me, Annie. I don't ask you to. Only if you feel you absolutely must send something or whatever. 

I'm having coffee right now. Sometimes, I add whipped cream to it and then give myself a little shake along with the can, just to feel I’m still alive. 

That’s the problem, this attitude. Everyone wants to strike through what they’ve said or written down. Sometimes they even want to strike through what someone else has said or written.

From time to time I wonder how good it would be to hide within the clouds and observe others from there. To watch who does what on the street, or at home. To see how they live through the nonstop rain and how much they scold life. 

#4 Tuesday, 7.08 AM

I know it's 'not my turn'. 

But I'm writing, damn it. I'm writing because I need to and I want to. Even if it's only through emails that I can talk to you. I don't have your phone number anymore because you don't need me anymore. I felt it more safe to delete it, so I wouldn't drive you crazy with my drunk text messages. 

I'm still feeling sick in my nose, Annie. The rain is falling heavily, as if someone had ordered the forty-day rain, though I think we're too late to start building a bark. And I caught a cold out there. I also have frontal sinusitis now but it's not as bad as it sounds, I’ve had it once already in the past. I'm dulled by the medicine. It feels like I was high as a kite. 

And this rain…You know I’ve had a dream last night, but I'm not sure if I should mention this to you at all at this point. 

Probably not. 

I can clearly hear your voice in my head right now, wondering in pain, ‘oh God, how can I unsubscribe from this moron...?’

#5 Saturday, 4.03 AM

You once told me in a dimly lit room that I'm like the rain. 

If I look out the window it still just keeps raining. Annie, I'm not like the rain. The rain is constant and continuous and I'm not. I cease to exist at nights, I barely sleep. The tv's standby button flashes in the darkness and I'm out of my head somewhere distant. Listening to the rainfall, my thoughts meandering from my mind to the corners of the room and then back. 

I take my medicine twice a day, as per prescription, and feel like a fucking old fart whose back is in pain all the time. I don't like it, I never take medicine unless I absolutely have to. For me, the quantity of needed medicine is the indicator of how bad things are. The more medicine I have to take, the bigger the problem is. It's almost as if each pill holds a hollow promise, encapsulating a thought, an emotion, or a mood – and I silently collect moods twice a day.

#6 Thursday, 9.37 PM

I remember when I used to be unable to sleep. I would always take a book and read it while cuddling with you. I turned the pages to the rhythm of your breathing, each of your cute, little sighs was a new line to read. I wish you had never left so I could finish my book, but I don’t feel like reading anymore.

#7 Thursday, 2.31 PM

I'm going to write down everything that I haven’t written lately, but I should have. 

I would have to write everything now that I was too shy to write. All the timidly waving words. But to be fair, I also like not-writing to you, because then I can hold onto the promise of time to write to you later. 

I didn't even write about how much I love your name. It's like a wine, a landscape, and a concept all at the same time. Like a unique constellation, stars should be named after you. 

These fucking words are waving timidly from the deep of my throat, and it's hard to take the courage to write them down. I wanted to write to you while it's raining because I definitely started to sense a pattern between my emails and the weather. But I couldn't write when it rained, and now that I sit here on the roof, it's just started to dry up. I guess I messed up timing. 

I'm running out of my cup of coffee, I can see the sugar melting and I wish I wouldn't need to see from the coffee machine's gleaming light strips how fast the time passes. 

You know, this morning I woke up to realize I had grown old. It is, of course, like the morning awakenings in general. I had sensed it in my gut for a long time, but now it has somehow become a reality. An unlikely reality. A sleepy, blurred reality much like all of my recent mornings. Those have never been the same since you're not next to me. All I have in those mornings now are my stupid filthy fantasies and the void in my chest. 

The wrinkles beside my eyes, the way I move, the depth of my palm, the twinge in my left knee, shifting speed while cycling... Stuff like these somehow become reality, and like many other random things, I wouldn't have noticed this either if it weren’t because of you. 

Now I realize that the most defining things in my life were never the emotions, as I once wanted to believe, oh no. 

It’s the desire. 

It's not intellect, love, or the great spirit of the ancestors that flows in my veins. It's the insatiable desire. 

I'm always craving. 

And I'm like the single-minded Little Prince gardener with the weeds – I didn't give a flying fuck about it. To be fair, I watered my trees and hoed the weeds. Still, I woke up to see they’ve engulfed my entire planet and I'm too old to do anything about it. I just sit in their shadows and wait. 

#8 Monday, 1.12 PM

I don't have enough words to describe how I feel and I definitely don't have enough words to be alone. I pay visits to different places, I assist others, yet throughout, I'm incredibly lonely. I just don't talk about it to anyone. And the funny thing about this is that I used to fear this feeling greatly, to be alone, but now that I’m used to it, it's not that scary anymore. 

I imagine that you're showering or eating or God knows what else you're doing right now. It sucks to experience things alone, as there's a place for someone in everything – someone who I don't have. 

Let's say, for example, that my left eye is me and you're there in my right eye. You should see so many little moments. Simple everyday things, like getting dressed in the morning, or the feeling of sleepiness itself, and then looking for shoes. Or peeking out from behind a window, putting vegetables on another plate at breakfast... 

At such times, I'm unbearably happy for a moment, and just like in the rain, you are there somehow in these little moments too. It just sucks that you're not here in the end, only in my thoughts when all these moments happen. It is how it is, of course, I can't do much about it, I guess. 

By the way, last night I dreamt that you replied to me, Annie. 

You asked me whether or not there's other girls to whom I write this kind of stuff. We spent a whole day together and you had these fucking questions. Weird. I was so afraid of being left alone in my dream that this fear compelled me to say things I wouldn't normally say when I'm awake. But in the end this whole thing led nowhere, there was no point in anything I said or did. 

Fuck.

#9 Friday, 1.11 PM

Have you ever felt letting someone drift away until a point that your stomach starts to twitch? I'm talking about how no one else has ever watched funny shows with me, placed vegetables on my breakfast plate, or read the Ocean Sea from Alessandro Baricco. And I don't want to wake up in the morning feeling like I no longer know you. So pretty fucking tragic twist of fate that I’m actually having this feeling growing stronger with each passing morning... This unbearable silence in the virtual space between us feels cruel. 

You would think that if you're able to dream of someone, then you cannot really be lonely because, even if it's only a dream at least you're together for the time. I couldn't have been more wrong. 

Now I don't want to dream of you anymore, it's so fucking weird. 

I just simply want you instead, in the most innocent way possible. I wish I could tell you how adorable I find you, even on your worst days. But I could never face you again telling this because by now I have realized that probably nothing is left from the ruins of our relationship other than awkward glances and the uncertain order of digits that once formed your phone number. 

It's so crazy how many people there are in the world and yet I might only need to swap two digits of your phone number to connect with someone who would answer with a beautiful voice. Someone I could fall for in an instant, like a sucker. 

Instead, when I try to recall (no pun intended) your phone number, there’s only a grim silence – a moment when sight and sound elude you, and everything becomes vague and uncertain, lacking both beginning and end.

I wish I could be just a phone call away from you again though. 

I wish I could be as close to you as how the wet skirt clings to thighs.

#10 Sunday, 10.46 AM

The less I understand life, the better I seem to learn living it. 

Never have I ever vomited from wine as honestly as I did last night, I just don't understand why the face I saw it drawing out resembled yours. Fuck this stupid Rorschach bullshit. 

After four glasses of wine, and just before an intense vomiting, one's soul seems truly caught in purgatory, I tell you. 

A sour aftertaste lingered in my mouth but all I could think of was your lips. That your mouth never had bad taste. In fact, each uttered word had a different taste in your mouth. Different, in a good way. 

And today, as I sober up, I can see now how our relationship was similar to our old, rented apartment. Or rather, more similar to its doorbell – at times it worked just well, at other times it didn't work at all, but if I keep pushing it hard enough then I might hear a weary “yes” following by an open door. 

#11 Sunday, 4.15 AM

Whatever, Annie. 

I got upset! 

I think I should say goodbye. It's just about time. I really should stop writing this stuff... right? 

If I think back to the guy I was for you in the past, I'm angry, because I so badly want to show you who I am now. God, I wish you could let me give you all that I was unable to give you. If only you would let me provide you with all what no one else was able to provide before. 

I want you to know that I'm a different person now, that I’ve learned from my errors and I pay attention to other people. That I have completely different plans regarding the next years, and that I feel like I have learned to love. I want to tell you how I’ve learned to love those things I once hated or criticized so much because I didn't understand them. 

But it seems that once you say something out loud, you can never take it back again.

I want to coincidentally bump into you in the subway and look at each other in astonishment. I imagine it would feel like the very first time we met, yet this time we would do everything differently. It's so fucked up that from being utter strangers, we slowly grew to lovers, then reverted back to being complete strangers again. 

Speaking of strangers… Yesterday someone called me while I was stone-skipping, but by the time I noticed the call and hurried to answer, they had hung up. It was a hidden caller ID so I couldn’t return the call. Maybe God tried to reach me at three in the afternoon and I fucking missed it. 

Anyways, I’ve come to say goodbye. 

No more words. 

There's no point to inhale you anymore if you can only exhale me. 

People always say, "Have a nice day". 

But as I doubt I'll ever be in contact with you again, can I say, "Have a nice life"? 

Can I, Annie...?